Various machines of this type are known. These machines basically have a bedplate or table, where a portion of ground meat enters. This portion passes through and between two sheets of paper cellophane or the like, each sheet coming from a coil and then stopping below a die. The die shapes the portion of meat into a hamburger. The enveloping sheets of paper or the like are jointly cut.
Specifically, Patent No. ES-P-9,000,304 of the same applicant is known, which describes a machine for processing hamburgers, which consists of, in a table-frame body, a vertical cylinder having a very large diameter, whose upper part constitutes the loading chamber, for initially receiving the mass of ground meat, the upper base of the cylinder having an outlet opening fitted together with the position of a changeable mold, whose features determine the size and weight of the pieces of meat or hamburgers produced. These pieces of meat are extracted by a releasing device and are positioned above a conveyor belt, above which pieces of protective paper made of flexible sheet material, obtained from two belt rollers located above and below the plane of displacement, are each applied to the two surfaces. A knife cuts the said pieces of protective paper with the hamburger inserted between them. Then, a second conveyor belt transports the hamburgers to the outlet, in whose path there is an optoelectronic device connected to a control circuit, which controls the operation of four fluid-dynamic cylinders for actuating the different devices.
In practice, however, the machines of this type have shown the following various drawbacks:
the large-diameter cylinder, which constitutes the chamber for loading the ground meat and whose upper end fills the mold, is imprecise and cannot guarantee the same compactness or weight for all hamburgers; PA1 many times the hamburger itself sticks to the device for releasing or expelling the hamburger contained in the mold to the conveyor belt, obstructing the running of the machine; PA1 the optoelectronic device for detecting the passing of the hamburgers is capable of being spattered with a small portion of ground meat, thus giving an incorrect order to the control circuit, which is expressed as the inappropriate actuation of the knife, which disadvantageously cuts a hamburger in half; PA1 even when the knife functions at the right time, it often happens that the freshly cut edge of paper sticks to the lower base of the knife, also obstructing the normal operation of the machine.